1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, which display a thumbnail image displayed on a screen in an enlarged scale, and a program.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, various information processing apparatuses are required to have effective display and selection methods of various kinds of information such as images and the like. For example, upon selecting a photo taken by a digital camera, it is a common practice to adopt a method of displaying thumbnail images (reduced images) of a plurality of photos side by side on the screen, and selecting one of them using a pointing device such as a mouse or the like. Also, in addition to images, a method of displaying a list of programs upon viewing of a television or video recording, and selecting a program from them is prevalently used.
However, when objects such as images and the like are reduced and a list of these objects is displayed, sufficient information cannot be displayed intact. Hence, the selected object is temporarily enlarged on the screen, or detailed information is independently displayed, thus improving user's convenience.
As such a technique, a method of displaying an object present at the position pointed by a pointing device in an enlarged scale is known. For example, this method is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-292870.
However, with the above method, other objects are occluded by the enlarged object, and the user can neither visually confirm nor select occluded objects.
To solve this problem, a method of separately displaying a reduced object list display area and an enlarged object display area on the screen, and displaying, when one reduced object is selected, a corresponding enlarged object on the enlarged object display area is also available. However, with such method of distinguishing the object display areas, the reduced object list display area becomes narrow from the very beginning, and the user can hardly select objects displayed in that area.
For this reason, conventionally, it is a common practice to display an enlarged object at the same position as that of an original reduced object or always at the center of the screen even when some reduced objects are occluded.